There is an advantage in having absolutely no inside information with regard to a puzzling church news story that has appeared over the past couple of weeks.  My ignorance allows me to think out loud as to what might be going on behind the curtain of secrecy in the appointment process for the next Bishop of Durham.  We have been told that the nominee for this prestigious post has withdrawn his/her name from the appointment process.   Speculation immediately arises, not only about the name of the individual concerned, but the possible reasons for any reasonably qualified individual not allowing him/herself to be suggested for the fourth most senior post in the Church of England.  Having no sources of information, I can join my readers in speculating that this piece of news may possibly denote a situation of crisis at the top, and it may have considerable implications for the future of the Church of England.  

Why is the withdrawal of one possible contender for the see of Durham a matter of potentially upmost seriousness?  Before we can attempt to answer that question, we should note that the task of finding someone to head up an organisation in any walk of life is seldom a straightforward task.  A selection committee may have to work extremely hard, only to find that none of the possible candidates are suitable for the post.  How many appointment committees end up appointing the least objectionable candidate rather than the best candidate, simply because they know an appointment has to be made?  In the case of parish appointments, there are some posts where no applications are being received.  Interregna stretch on over the years and the only thing that changes is that the band of retired clergy ‘helping out’ get older and frailer.  The House for Duty option is becoming increasingly less attractive as the costs of heating a rural vicarage become unaffordable on a pension.  When an appointment is eventually made, problems do not necessarily go away.  The appointment committee may have to witness how the lack of experience they had noted in a candidate at the interview stage, turns into a parochial nightmare which nothing except a future retirement will be able to resolve.

The candidates for posts of bishop do not arrive for selection without their own personal histories.  These may have attracted a share of controversy and challenge.  The episcopal candidates may well be men and women of real ability and skill, but the situations they potentially face are still highly stressful.  One contemporary challenge is summed up in the two words ‘social media’.  This pair of words sums up a whole host of hazards for a bishop in the Church of England.  The uncomfortable reality of occupying a prominent role in an organisation, under constant media scrutiny, include being discussed and criticised on Facebook or X without having a realistic opportunity to reply.  Even if the discussion about you is relatively friendly, the sheer fact of constant exposure to the public must be a constant strain.  

Two suggestions to explain why the nominee for the Bishop of Durham is withdrawing from the process have been made.   One is somewhat mischievous and needs no further discussion.  The candidate is thought to be angling for the other current vacancy, that of the throne of Canterbury.  The more likely explanation is that the role of Diocesan bishop has become increasingly unattractive over the years and that qualified candidates simply do not want the sheer stress of occupying the role.  At any one time, there are only a finite number of candidates capable of filling the post of a diocesan bishop.  Is the person that might be qualified free to be considered?  The window of time that exists for such a major move to be made may be fairly narrow.   Also, as with parishes, dioceses come with plusses and minuses, many to do with finance.   A number of the 42 English dioceses are believed to have financial black holes which could make a vacant diocese an uncomfortable post to preside over.  To have to worry about parishes in your diocese being unable or unwilling to pay the parish share is a considerable burden.    The fact of a serious deficit is only part of the problem.  It is the fact that the necessary response to deficits, closing or amalgamating parishes, potentially makes the incoming bishop part of a ‘them’ trying to ‘destroy’ the parish system.  The situation in Truro and Leicester, where creation of massive teams and groupings of parishes is well under way, is not thought to be a happy one.

The role of a bishop seems sometimes like that of an unpopular manager closing down local branches of a national company.  Closing anything down is never popular and it will, perhaps inevitably, create considerable personal stress for the would-be office holder.  A recent, but even greater, source of stress has been laid on the entire episcopal body through the advent of safeguarding.  If there is a diocese which has an exemplary record in this area, we will probably never hear about it.   If bishops and safeguarding officers are playing their part in preventing harm happening to vulnerable individuals, that is as it should be.  Sadly, we only hear about failures and neglect.  No kudos or congratulations is given to a bishop who gives a great deal of energy and effort to getting safeguarding right. It is a tails you lose and heads no one will ever know.  Safeguarding is an arena of deep unhappiness for victims and survivors but often also for those who oversee its implementation.  The Church of England had an opportunity to let go of this area of enormous stress in the February Synod.  But, by retaining final control of safeguarding in-house, the C/E has built into the role of its officeholders, everyone from bishops to churchwardens, a responsibility which can be thoroughly toxic.  By its nature it seldom seems to be able to promote joy or creative change in those who administer it.

In 2025 we contemplate an institution, the Church of England, which, for many, has become a place of stress and unhappiness.   In the past it was easy to glimpse a certain glamour in the prestige and power of those who presided over this venerable organisation as bishops.  Some of those who exercised that power in British society are remembered for fulfilling a role as the moral conscience of the nation.  It is hard for bishops today to achieve such a profile when the discussions that are heard by the public, seem to be self-absorbed and even trivial.   

In asking the question again as to why a nominee for a prestigious bishopric should withdraw his or her candidacy, we might answer with one word – morale.  The individual so nominated may simply see in front of him/her endless insoluble issues of finance, management and personnel.  The would-be bishop does not feel capable of dealing with them all without ending up as a severe casualty of depression and stress.  At the heart of a bishop’s calling is the pastoral support and care of the clergy in his diocese.  These other essential priorities – management, finance and safeguarding – get in the way of this vital task.  If he/she is prevented from caring for the clergy, then the heart of the episcopal task is being laid to one side.  It is small wonder that more clergy are more likely to seek the opposite to preferment, preferring a post which allows them to do the ordinary priestly tasks of teaching, pastoral care and providing first class inspiring worship.  The old-fashioned activity of parish and hospital visiting was right at the top of the ‘things-to-do-list’ during my training years in the 70s.  I accept that parish priorities have had to change with the times over the past 30 years, but I cannot see that a regime which seems to attract to itself endless form filling and team meetings, allows the human vocational aspect of priesthood to flourish.

The simple question why the nominee to the bishopric of Durham withdrew, may have a simple answer.  The person so nominated recognised that the job was now one that has developed and turned into a monster that is impossible to control.    Questions abound over the mental health of archbishops and bishops alike are already being asked elsewhere.  Parish priests have their own sets of problems which challenge mental and physical stamina.  We cannot discuss that issue of parishes today, but it seems clear that the lot of the parish priest is more difficult to manage than in the past.  If I am right, then the claim will be reflected in the declining number offering themselves for full time ministry.  When these numbers recover that may be an indicator that morale is returning to the Church of England.

The major debate at General Synod last week on safeguarding ended for many of us in a disappointing place.  Synod decided that the Church of England itself should have another chance to get things right with safeguarding.  What came out of the debate was held up to be a compromise between the so-called option 3 and option 4.  The latter was an attempt to place the whole safeguarding work of the Church outside the  structures and control of the C/E.  This was the path preferred by most survivors and those who support them. This was a perspective seen to be increasingly needed over the many years of mistakes, incompetence and even corruption on the part of the church authorities, in their dealings with survivors and their pain.  An amendment, argued powerfully by Bishop Philip North, neutralised this path to full independence.  Instead of utilising the high levels of secular professional safeguarding expertise right across the country, Synod, in the end, decided to keep much of the status quo by trusting many of the in-house structures.  This decision ran counter to the recommendation of Alexis Jay.  She had been given the task of researching the issue and making her findings known to Synod.

In this blog I do not propose to argue the detail of the safeguarding debate at Synod in February 2025 beyond this bare outline.  For me, what is important is to reflect on how the debate about independence can be seen, at its heart, to be a theological debate about the way the Church understands its access to divine truth.  Some Christians teach and preach the notion that truth is something that can be claimed and made known, if only we listen diligently to the inspired words of Scripture and the teaching contained in two thousand years of tradition.   The idea that an outside agency in the form of an independent safeguarding body should help make decisions about this part of its life, seems to challenge the idea that the Holy Spirit is leading us into all truth.  Turning to secular professionalism, as a way forward in the management of our safeguarding crisis, challenges, even contradicts, for some, deeply held assumptions about Christian ideas of truth.  And it is these assumptions that are implicit in a debate on safeguarding independence that I want us to look at.

Over my lifetime I have been a strong upholder of the idea that we are permitted to know Christian truth and to share it with others.  My theological studies at university taught me that this was , however, not a straightforward task.  For example, the use of ‘clincher texts’ was never for me the way to go in establishing truth statements.  The Bible had to be used in a far more nuanced way than this.  Exposure to ancient languages opened up even more clearly the insight that language often lacks precise unchangeable definitions.   A single word in English can shift in some way in the meaning we give to it over a period of time.  The Christian life could never have a ‘once for all’ meaning; changing and maturing in how we understand truth, is a feature of our Christian pilgrimage.

One thing I have learnt over the years is to observe how Christians deal with uncertainty.  Some are deeply fearful when they find they do not know something to do with faith and truth.  Because the churches they attend use the currency of certainty and truth the whole time, they assume that they are expected to have their faith sorted out and are thus always able to give a good account of what they are required to believe.  Others, the fortunate ones in my opinion, are not so threatened by their awareness of uncertainty.  They know something about God and Jesus and find something compellingly attractive about the Bible.  The darker aspects of faith, those that suggest that they may end up in a place of utter despair and pain if they make a less than a total heartfelt commitment to this God, have never been shared with them.  Thus, they are not tempted to see their faith as a cause of gloom or depression through an exposure to a ‘turn or burn’ theology.  Rather the Christian faith has been shared with them as an invitation to construct meaning and hope and to make sense of all that is good and beautiful about life.  There are, of course, difficult paths to walk and tragedies to face, but that part of life is counteracted by a deep sense of a constant presence as expressed in Psalm 23, ‘for thou art with me, thy rod and staff, they comfort me’.

In debating whether we should allow safeguarding to be undertaken inhouse or seconded to a body outside the control of the leaders and structures of the church, I sense somewhere a discussion similar to the one outlined above.  On the one side we have those who see their faith defined by their leaders and teachers.  Teachings which centre on assurance and certainty will always have strong appeal to those who are fearful of embracing anything that speaks of uncertainty.  Styles of faith which look to others for constant reassurance are found in conservative churches of all kinds.  The longing that leaders will always produce safe and reliable answers to faith questions is likely to translate into an expectation that these same leaders will be expected to be right on every topic.  If a bishop or leader indicates that he/she teaches the truth in one area of life, he/she can be relied upon to get things right (e.g safeguarding) in other areas. 

The Christian who is unafraid of uncertainty will also be unafraid of experts whose skill-set has relevant things to say to areas of life outside the domain of theology.  Safeguarding is one of the areas of professional expertise where secular experts clearly have a great deal to teach Christians.   A list of relevant disciplines that touch on the area of safeguarding, (law, psychology and sociology to name a few) makes it likely that there will not be many fully trained within these varied disciplines of knowledge among the church people who want to claim safeguarding expertise.   The upholders of option 4 seem to be those synod members who recognise two things simultaneously.  The first is that the universally bungled management of safeguarding in the C/E over the past ten years or so has been, in part, caused by church having assumed some kind of infallible knowledge in this area.  This fact then requires the second stage – the release of control of this part of church activity to those who have relevant experience and skills.  An individual Christian or Synod member may believe that the Bible ‘teaches everything necessary for salvation’ or that the Church possesses the ‘faith once and for all delivered to the Saints’ so that nothing can ever be added.  This may have the effect of making them unwilling ever to tolerate the idea that a non-believer may, in many areas of knowledge and activity, know best.  I am one of those Christians who welcomes, with an enormous gratitude, the insights of those who share their expertise and experience on areas of knowledge that Christians cannot claim privileged insight.  We need such expertise and, with it, we enrich whatever theological insight we may possess studying these topics.

Resisting option 4, which pleaded for the insights and expertise of secular authorities to be given to the Church. seems to favour a defensive and fearful approach to safeguarding.    The welcoming of true independence is a approach that also welcomes a fearless, open approach to faith which is hope-suffused and open to joy.   Wanting safeguarding in any way to be kept in-house is also similar to an approach that seems to thrive on fear and suspicion of the wider world. Further, many Christians seem to have been tainted by the shadow of abuse whether as perpetrator, victim or bystander.   For them, there is always going to be some sense of unprocessed guilt and shame, especially if these negative emotions are frequently mentioned in the circles they moved in.  Abuse, whether sexual or some other kind, is deeply contaminating and traumatising and it is not surprising that many who have encountered it want to shut it out of awareness as much as possible.  Rejecting option 4 ss one way of burying deep pain and distress.

The Church of England in February 2025 is still haunted by the ghosts of past shame.  It has shown that it is not yet ready to welcome the cleansing insights of secular knowledge which can do much to purge the institution and make it the honest and healing body that the general public wants to see.   Post Makin and post Jay we need to see a new longing  from all, the bishops to the folk in the pew, to work for and welcome utter honesty and humility.  If independence and option 4 are the ultimate destination for the C/E, may they come quickly.

Some years ago, I wrote a blog post on the topic of power and patronage as they apply to church and society.  This theme was on my mind because I was then preparing to give a talk on Joan of Arc and asking some questions about the enthusiasm she was able to inspire and share among her followers.  One point that had to be made was that Joan was only able to do what she did, and gain an army to pursue her vision, because a member of the French nobility was prepared to back her.  Without this aristocratic patronage, her cause would never have got under way.  Joan was considered low-born, and she needed the affirmation of someone born to power and authority to set her up in her brief but unexpectedly dramatic successes on the battlefield against the English occupiers. 

Patronage is an interesting word.  It describes the dynamic in the way a rich powerful individual can share some of that power, with a chosen few, in a social rank below them. Unless an individual were born into the very highest rank of a society, he/she would have to wait on others, considered their social superiors, to notice them and help them to achieve a better status or rank than the one they presently enjoyed. The patronage to be handed out by the high-born was very real and potentially life-changing for the recipient.  A great deal of effort went into trying to access it by trying to be agreeable to, as well as noticed by, those who possess it.   From a percentage perspective, only a few would be successful in gaining the attention and favour they sought.  The agony and possibly life-changing ecstasy of a successful pursuit of ecclesiastical patronage by poor clergy is a constant sub-plot in both Jane Austen’s and Anthony Trollope’s 19^th century novels.  Even today it can be said to exist in the C/E, but the financial dimension that used to mesmerise the ‘lower’ clergy is less important than it once was.

The recent discussion of abuse allegations against the late David Fletcher on Channel 4 News, has reminded me of the considerable importance that patronage plays in the Church of England, even now.   It would be hard to find another individual in the con-evo network who seems to have once had as much ‘patronage power’ as the Honourable David Clare Molyneux Fletcher. Apart from his role as organiser of the Iwerne Camps for a dozen years after 1965, he seems, in his heyday, to have known absolutely everyone in the con-evo world within the C/E.  David Fletcher would have had an immense amount of personal information about dozens of potential applicants for ecclesiastical preferment within the con-evo network. To obtain preferment to any leadership role in one of these wealthy con-evo parishes in England, a young man would typically have attended the right school, the right theological college and volunteered for service in the summer camps at Iwerne.  As the full-time leader of these Iwerne camps for 12 years, David possessed an unrivalled acquaintance of everyone in the con-evo world for over thirty years and, according to Makin, also got to know early on more about the criminal activities of John Smyth than anyone else. As the one entrusted with furthering the vision of E J Nash (Bash) to convert the elite of Britain, he had the task of spotting and encouraging future leaders who would be able to take the ‘work’ forward.  David seems to have taken very seriously this selection and mentoring of those who were deemed suitable for leadership roles in the part of the C/E that shared this theological vision of Bash. After 12 years in this role as the Iwerne leader, David would have known about the details of the personal lives of every single young man passing through the camp system.  With this extensive personal knowledge about so many, David (and his influential brother Jonathan) would, at the very least, always been consulted to offer an opinion on which candidates deserved promotion.  While we obviously cannot claim to understand how the system of patronage worked in detail, it is clear from a study of Crockford that few outsiders were ever able to penetrate the charmed circle of those who ‘belonged’ to the ex-public school elite inner Iwerne ring.  The system of patronage seems to have operated from the day the young man was invited to a summer camp at Iwerne.  Those who chose to be ordained had then to compete to be placed in one of the prestigious evangelical parishes as curates.  Young Iwerne graduates often stayed as assistant curates within one of these parishes for up to 15 years, waiting for the patronage system to pick them to be a Vicar of an internationally known con-evo parish and thus one of the evangelical celebrities.  The main con-evo parishes in England have an extraordinary number of curates, some up to 14.  An ordinary parish in the C/E is lucky to have a full-time incumbent, while wealthy parishes in the Iwerne con-evo network operate in a quite different way.  While most clergy might expect, over a professional career, to serve in parishes which practise a variety of styles of worship, those privileged by having access to con-evo patronage seem to glide from one prestigious and well-endowed post to another.  David Fletcher himself moved to take up the prestigious incumbency of St Ebbes in Oxford after Iwerne and here he remained till retirement.  These two posts had put him right at the centre of the non-charismatic evangelical universe in the C/E.  In these posts he would have had an encyclopaedic knowledge of dozens, if not hundreds, of individuals passing through the con-evo system.  If we liken the con-evo world to a spider’s web of camps, conferences, colleges and parishes, it is hard to see how David Fletcher was ever anywhere but at the very centre, able to operate patronage power very extensively.  I have no reason to suppose that he did not do this and that the con-evo world will still bear the hallmarks of his influence even though he is no longer alive.    

So far, I have tried (probably unsuccessfully) to be neutral in my description of the exercise of patronage within the con-evo bubble within the C/E.  I do have serious concerns about the way that a clique of socially powerful privileged churchmen who have never served in any but the wealthy conservative parishes in our large cities can understand the problems of the wider church.  In itself, patronage can be a neutral exercise of power.  It may even be justified on ethical grounds.  The problem arises when the one with patronage power is discovered to be corrupt or self-serving.  The United States is going through a period of serious trauma as its President exercises his power in an arbitrary way with little attention to the welfare of real people.  David Fletcher’s (and his brother Jonathan’s) exercise of patronage might qualify as ethical if it could be argued that both were exercising it in an utterly disinterested fashion.   The problem that arises is that both brothers are now credibly accused of wrongdoing in the area of sexual activity.   The detail of their alleged misdemeanours is unimportant here.    What is important is that serious ethical lapses are being associated with two formerly important evangelical leaders.  Between them, the Fletcher brothers had been instrumental in helping to create and sustain the incredibly powerful con-evo faction which, even now, seeks to control the future direction of the Church of England.  The ethical question which we have here to wrestle with is whether the good someone achieves is ever cancelled by their secret sin.  Do we feel that what David (and Jonathan) left behind damages their legacy to the Church in terms of conversions, the fostering of vocations to ministry and their teaching skills? I know that some will want to overlook the current serious allegations against David on the grounds that he was a key figure in their own formation towards a Christian identity.  I am not sure we can. There must be literally hundreds who fall into this category of being indebted to one or both of the Fletcher brothers for their spiritual formation.   Can we ignore revelations about their personal lives?   Speaking for myself, I would feel utterly betrayed if any of my personal ‘gurus’ or mentors turned out to have credible accusations against them of sexual sin.  Sexual sin inevitably involves betrayal, whether of a partner or a vulnerable victim.  Everyone whom I have followed as a mentor or teacher (mostly now dead) received my trust and confidence.  If any of them, even now, turned out to have done something which cynically betrayed such trust, I would feel deeply betrayed and would want to question everything else I had once valued about the relationship.

There is now a crisis in the Church which we hesitate to name.  The crisis is created by the fact that, one after another, many of our leaders are currently being shown to have feet of clay.  Some seem to have deplorable secrets from the past.  Others seem incapable of sticking to the truth while others seem to be missing a proper understanding of what it means to love and respect another human being, particularly in a state of need or distress.  We desperately need leaders of unimpeachable integrity to look up to and admire.  We talk about children finding role models.  If they find them, whether among footballers or television personalities, we want these models to be consistently reliable, stable and predictable in the way they behave.  It is a serious matter if a role model and dispenser of patronage power, like David Fletcher, turns out to have betrayed the trust of so many.  Pretending that this event has not happened, and that there is no case for institutional and personal self-examination, is dishonest and damaging to the ideals of the con-evo movement.  Silence can never be the response.      

Martin Sewell & Stephen Trott

Martin writes: Members of the General Synod are not the only legislators taking an interest in the issue of Church of England Safeguarding Reform together with the issues of bad governance that inevitably lie cheek by jowl with it

Bad governance, bad safeguarding practice, and a patrician culture of omertà amongst the leadership was bound to result in a collapse of trust in the Established Church once the scandal got out, and so it has proved. The long delayed Makin Review, has proved only  the slow burning fuse and once published, a chain reaction of anger began.

Investigative reporter Cathy Newman had know about the story for a long time but need the full facts before providing the oxygen of publicity necessary for the explosion of anger to begin; the Church of England has behaved precisely like the “Post Office at Prayer” for a decade and Cathy Newman’s journalism has provided the counterpart narrative to the docs drama “ Mr Bates vs the Post Office”

On the last edition of the BBC Radio 4 Sunday programme the Conservative Parliamentary lead for Safeguarding, Ms Alicia Kearns  called for a Royal Commission into the safeguarding scandals and this follows a significant number of Members of Parliament expressing anger towards the Church leadership during the January session questions to the new Second Estates Commissioner Marsha de Cordova who was necessarily diplomatic but plainly sympathetic to their concerns.

Ms Kearns, the MP for Rutland and Stamford, had plainly been well briefed and as I listened, I recognised the cogent arguments of a one time Synod colleague and safeguarding stalwart Revd Stephen Trott and so it transpired.

Stephen Trott “ knows his stuff”. He had been  a member of the 2003 Revision Committee of the 2003 CDM Measure and had identified that the Bishops had conveniently contrived to exclude themselves from its jurisdiction. One suspects the the although that commission was corrected, Revd Trott  began to realise the nature of the problem from that experience.

 He plainly understands his subject; he was a member of General Synod 1995-2021, where he has served on the Legal Advisory Commission, and the Legislative Committee.

The current crisis has provided him with the opportunity to adjust and share his paper, which he did via Ms Kearns whom he he had encountered in the course of his Ministry.

This has since been shared with other MPs of all parties,  and, just as we found with the Post Office, they are coming together on a cross party basis to address historic wrongs. Whether it is about empathy for the victims or antipathy to the privileged position of the Established Church matters little. As Alan Bennet once wrote “ the sky is black with chickens coming home to roost”

Readers can read the short paper here. In many ways what happens in the chaos of the February Synod is not the most significant aspect of the next few days; what will count is what Parliament and the media make of what they see.

Safeguarding failure by the National Institutions of the Church of England

Proposal for the establishment of a Royal Commission
to reform the governance of the Church of England

1 Safeguarding failures in the Church of England

There have been many and widely publicised safeguarding failures by the authorities of the Church of England, at diocesan and at national level, with many survivors whose experience and needs have not been addressed, who have been denied due process, acknowledgement, justice and compensation for their situation.

It has taken some twenty years for dioceses to develop safeguarding programmes and training for the clergy, mostly acting in isolation from each other to devise systems for teaching safeguarding and for implementing it at a diocesan level. Many safeguarding officers are former members of the police with specific training in disclosure and barring, and in management of CSA cases. The situation at diocesan level is significantly improved, with case reviews of all clergy undertaken to ensure that those with safeguarding issues are identified and managed. The lack of a national syllabus, training programme or qualifications remains however a gap in the implementation of safeguarding nationally, not least because clergy move from diocese to diocese, or are asked to officiate in other dioceses.

At national level the Archbishops’ Council, created in 1998 as a top tier for the constitution of the Church of England above the General Synod, has failed quickly enough to develop national policy, or to respond to survivors, or to hand over national safeguarding to a body independent of the Church of England. In recent years there has been an evolving series of safeguarding authorities created by the Council, but all have proved ineffective to deal with the situation, as old and new cases of abuse of children and vulnerable adults have emerged and have been largely ignored. Its current proposals for “independent” safeguarding do not offer genuine independence.

The Clergy Discipline Measure of 2003 imposes a limit of twelve months for complaints to be made against members of the clergy. An exception to this can be made by the President of the Tribunals, but this discretion has not always been exercised as it should be. Many historic cases have come to light, some dating back decades, some more recent, but complainants have been denied justice. It is the nature of safeguarding that survivors frequently do not come forward until many years after they have suffered abuse.

Many of these survivors have been asking their bishops for support, to intervene, or even to reply to letters which have been ignored in some cases for more than a decade. Many bishops, including Justin Welby, have declined to meet with survivors.

The Report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, chaired by Professor Alexis Jay, published in 2022, examined in detail the issue of safeguarding in the Church of England and other churches. The report called for the creation of a fully independent body to oversee safeguarding practices within religious organizations. The inquiry highlighted systemic failures in the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, including prioritizing the reputation of the church over the welfare of children. It found evidence of poor responses to allegations, insufficient support for survivors, and inconsistent safeguarding practices.

The Archbishops and their Council have consistently sought to avoid the transfer of oversight of safeguarding to an fully independent body by means of creating its own solutions to deal with these matters, but this has not produced a viable alternative to an independent body.

Redress has been promised to survivors, but it is endlessly delayed, and the amounts of compensation wholly unsatisfactory in the light of the suffering which survivors have undergone. Most have not received anything, and many continue to be ignored by their bishops and by the Council.

The John Smyth Review, published as the Makin Report in November 2024, after some six years of delays, finally exposed the existence of the widest and longest running system of abuse in the Church of England, dating back at least to the 1970s and involving several hundred victims in England and in South Africa and Zimbabwe, at the hands of John Smyth QC, an Evangelical barrister supported by a network connected to the Iwerne Trust.

One of those who worked for the Trust at its camps was Justin Welby, who claims not to have been aware of the abuse taking place as a young man, and consistently refused to engage with survivors of the abuse carried out by Smyth.

The Makin Report shows that from 2013 onwards Welby must have been aware of the allegations being made, but neither he nor his staff and other bishops made a concerted effort to close down Smyth’s activities, by now residing in South Africa in order to avoid scrutiny in the UK. Smyth was enabled to continue multiple abuses until his death in 2018, before he could be extradited back to the UK to face questioning. His victims in the UK have in many cases been denied any meeting with either Archbishop Welby or with other officers of the Archbishops’ Council, until very recently.

2 Unaccountability of bishops and archbishops and of the Archbishops’ Council

At the root of the problem is the obsolete constitution of the Church of England and the almost complete absence of accountability for its leaders or its National Institutions, especially the Archbishops’ Council, created by Archbishop George Carey in 1998 as a superstructure to the General Synod. Although the Church of England remains part of the law of England, access to redress is largely limited to expensive attempts at judicial review. There is no body to supervise the Church or to reform it. It is exempt from Freedom of Information legislation. The House of Bishops meets in private and does not publish full minutes of its proceedings.

The office of a bishop or archbishop is largely as it was left by Henry VIII, some of whose legislation in several areas remains active on the statute book, such as the Appointment of Bishops Act of 1533. Today, however, the Crown plays no role in supervising the bishops. The office of prime minister has absorbed the powers and most of the prerogatives of the Crown including hose relating to the Established Church. Prime ministers appointed the bishops and archbishops until this role was handed over by Gordon Brown to the Church itself in 2007. The House of Bishops has as a consequence become a self-replicating body, with most new appointments coming from a pool of candidates chosen and promoted by the Archbishops.

In 1919 Parliament created the first devolved government – the Church Assembly, known since 1970 as the General Synod of the Church of England. Apart from the Ecclesiastical Committee of Parliament, which scrutinises church legislation known as Measures, the General Synod is not governed by or practically accountable to Parliament. Questions are asked by MPs which are answered by the Second Church Estates Commissioner, who relies on staff at Church House to provide research and answers. There is no mechanism by which MPs can act in response.

The problem was compounded in 1998 with the National Institutions Measure, which created the Archbishops’ Council as a new top tier of church government, as a corporate body in its own right, removing from the General Synod its vital role of self-government, and placing uncertain powers in the hands of a partly elected, partly appointed Council controlled by the Archbishops. Its functions include the management of Synodical government, whose agenda it controls, and it has taken increasing powers for itself by means of a series of Measures and Statutory Instruments. It is currently proposing the formation of a new system of governance in which power passes into the hands of a new body over which the Archbishops will have even more influence and control. There is no meaningful accountability to Parliament, or in practice to the General Synod, which is historically and legally the devolved governing body of the Church of England.

Doubts were raised in 1998 as to the purpose and role of the new Archbishops’ Council. It is because of the confusion of roles between the Council and the Synod and the assumption of power by the Council that the failure of the Church of England’s leaders to address safeguarding effectively has taken place, continuing to sideline Professor Jay’s recommendation of a completely independent safeguarding body, and perpetually postponing any real redress or even acknowledgement for survivors. The absence of accountability is the striking root cause of the national safeguarding failure, and of other significant issues as well.

Although Parliament could in principle exercise its sovereignty over the Church, by repealing the 1919 legislation, or that of 1969 which created General Synod, convention ensures that it will not do so. Again, the European Convention on Human Rights now protects religious bodies from intervention by the State of the kind which might have occurred before 1919. It would not be appropriate for what is now a secular Parliament directly to supervise the Church of England, although the Church remains Established in law as the national church and in possession of the historic endowments and property which it received on trust at the Reformation.

3 Reforming the current governance of the Church of England

The situation in the Church of England with regard to safeguarding, and to the rights of all its members nationwide who look to General Synod as its governing body, is now intolerable, and a means must be found to ensure transparency, genuine and effective accountability, and respect for the rights of church members which are being diminished by the acquisition of absolute power by those at the centre. There is one mechanism which can be deployed, however. As the Established Church, its canon law explicitly acknowledges that it remains subject to the Royal Supremacy.

Canon A7 Of the Royal Supremacy

We acknowledge that the King’s excellent Majesty, acting according to the laws of the realm, is the highest power under God in this kingdom, and has supreme authority over all persons in all cause, as well ecclesiastical as civil.

It is well within the bounds of constitutional propriety for a Royal Commission to be set up to inquire into the abuses of power in the Church of England, its failure to respond to the gravest safeguarding issues and to the recommendations made by IICSA, and the almost complete lack of
accountability either by its bishops in the exercise of their office, or by the National Institutions of the Church, especially the Archbishops’ Council.

There is precedent for setting up such a Royal Commission. From 1904-1906 a Royal Commission on Ecclesiastical Discipline heard evidence from many witnesses, and in its Report recommended modernisation of the restrictive laws controlling public worship. This ultimately led to the devolution by Parliament to the Church Assembly of powers of self-government in 1919 via the
Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, while retaining the right to examine and to reject any Measure passed by the Church Assembly, or later the General Synod, which would negatively affect the constitutional rights of all the King’s subjects.

A new Royal Commission would be able to take evidence, examine the ways in which the present arrangements are failing, and propose legislative change by Act of Parliament, in order to bring the current governance of the Church into line with the best practice of the 21st century, for the sake of all church members and of all citizens of this country.

Safeguarding is the presenting issue. It will not be resolved, as other issues will not be resolved, while the Church’s authorities remain unaccountable to anyone. Bishops must be made into constitutional rather than absolute monarchs, and elected publicly, not in secret. Control and government of the national institutions must be returned to the General Synod itself, whose Houses of Clergy and Laity are elected to represent the parishes and people who maintain the Church’s presence for the benefit of everyone in England. We have been here before.

The creation of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1836 was designed to deliver extensive reform to a Church which had become fossilised and subject to many abuses. The Established Church of today urgently needs full accountability, transparency, and reform of its outdated government and appointments. The means to this end is the continuing authority of the Crown, in history, in its functions, and in canon law, to appointing a Royal Commission on Church Governance to deliver the radical changes which are needed.

Stephen Trott